Too much tea (skeletal fluorosis)

The topic of fluorides in tea has come up from time to time. A recent article came up describing a woman who drank tea made from "at least 100 tea bags" (yes folks, here x >= 100) every day for 17 years.

Let's see, if you assume 1.5-2g of tea in each bag (rough guess), that's 150-200g of tea each day. At least.

Unfortunately the article ends with this tagline:

Rachel Rettner at MyHealthNewsDaily wrote:Pass it on: A 47-year-old U.S. woman developed a bone disease after drinking a pitcher of tea a day for 17 years.

I want to know how big was that pitcher. Most pitchers I have seen after 100 teabags there really wouldn't be much room for water left. ( I'd imagine the pitcher would be less than half full after they remove them). Either way I guess you can stuff your pot with tea bags.

There has been a lot of research on tea fluorine, especially tea made with older leaves consumed by northwest regions of China. Most of the studies show that the older the leaves, the more fluorine there is. Traditionally, these very old leaves are made into mostly hei cha and low grade puerh. But in the traditional time, such tea with fluorine helped northwestern nomads people get enough nutrients and minerals. It was a trade-off between extra fluorine and additional nutrients, because traditional nomads people had mainly meat and dairy diet and tea, especially rough tea, was very much needed.

Most of those tea fluorine studies also suggest that, as long as the tea leaves are not extremely old or low grade - still talking about relatively low grade leaves in hei cha, and just not extremely low grade - fluorine wouldn't be a problem. So, either the woman drank too much tea, or her tons of teabags had mysterious sources Besides, one case without repetition never says much about anything. I bet there are people who never touch tea get fluorine problems too

Gingko, while I am glad to hear about these other studies, I don't think Drax was suggesting any of us are really in danger, mainly by his rough calculations. I mean how many of us go through 100grams of tea a day let alone 150 or 200 ?

While some of us on very heavy days can possibly hit that, I have a hard time believing many if any teachat members are hitting 100 grams of tea on an average day, let alone every day.

Chip there may be a teaday question in here, "Estimate how many grams of tea you consume on a typical day?"

I drink tea throughout the day, but because I tend to brew dilute, like to keep infusing into the sweetwater phase, and share a fair bit of what I do brew at work, my actual grams/day of tea is probably quite low. Might have to try to keep track while waiting for the teaDay question!

AdamMY wrote:Gingko, while I am glad to hear about these other studies, I don't think Drax was suggesting any of us are really in danger, mainly by his rough calculations. I mean how many of us go through 100grams of tea a day let alone 150 or 200 ?

I suppose I could search around for this information, but I need to go to bed soon, and maybe one of you already knows...

I'm assuming that it's actually fluoride that's causing the problem (that is, fluorine ions, or F- ; these would be the similar type of ions that if you took table salt, sodium chloride, and dissolved it in water to get Na+ and Cl-), and that's as opposed to fluorinated organic compounds.

If that's true, any ideas what the plants use them for? In other words, why do tea plants tend to collect F-?

Just read the NEJM case report version of this story, and it clearly emphasizes the number of tea bags and the estimated flouride intake of >20mg/d of flouride from all that tea. The 'pass it on' about a 'pitcher of tea a day' was made up by the writer of the Yahoo article.

Drax wrote:I suppose I could search around for this information, but I need to go to bed soon, and maybe one of you already knows...

I'm assuming that it's actually fluoride that's causing the problem (that is, fluorine ions, or F- ; these would be the similar type of ions that if you took table salt, sodium chloride, and dissolved it in water to get Na+ and Cl-), and that's as opposed to fluorinated organic compounds.

It is fluoride ion that is the issue, it can take the place of other halogens giving different properties (less soluble, more brittle, etc.). This is especially true for kids who are growing fast and can easily incorporate F- into bones. Typically this is not an issue with adults who are not growing like kids.Fluorinated, and other halogenated, organic compounds will give you cancer and other nasty stuff, but are not really a bone issue.

Arghh I can get all worked up about this stuff! I am SQUARELY against fluor-bombing the drinking water!

Preventing cavities...hah! That is the task of people themselves and of their dentists, not of the water supply companies!

I've been thinking many times of writing a letter of protest to the govt or the water suppliers...but would it have any effect...? *sigh*

Thank goodness in the Netherlands they abandoned fluor-bombing well before I was born, so I didn't have that burden while growing up. But my parents did give me fluoride tablets. And I liked them, yummy peppermints!